Blogger Rate Calculator – Free Tool

Is there such a thing as a blogger rate calculator tool? Not really. Blogger rate setting isn’t about numbers – it’s about influence and the ability to inspire a community. So what’s this then? This tool compares your current sponsored post and Facebook shout out rates with other bloggers in your niche. It’s not the be all and end all authority on calculating the worth of a blogger’s toil. It’s simply a summary of the state of blogger charges in the industry for 2016 – 2017.

How to use the blog charging calculator

Ready to find out where you stand with your blogger fees? Get started now. It’s free and quick

But.. it works out that my hourly rate will be pittance!

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OMG I am soooo overcharging 🙁

Maybe, maybe not. Remember that the blogger rate calculator only considers the two most basic numbers. What’s far more important is influence. This case study was fascinating – we found that Facebook’s algorithm actually puts smaller bloggers with fewer than 1000 followers at a big advantage. So smaller bloggers may not reach gazillions of people, but they reach a far greater percentage of their audience. If that audience is well engaged, loyal and devoted to you, your influence justifies higher than average fees.

A real world example (of which there are many – this is just one):

We have a client that sells beautiful educational toys. He chose two bloggers to do some outreach with. One is a mega blogger – with hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans and enviable monthly stats. This one took most of his budget. The other was This Charming Mum, a smaller blog that gives smart, interesting reviews. While the initial campaign saw more than double the referrals come from the mega blogger (not great considering she was roughly 14 times the price), for 4 months after (and counting), This Charming Mum referred buyer after buyer. The client made far more money from This Charming Mum than the mega blogger overall.

This Charming Mum as a blog, engages its small but loyal audience so much that they scroll back through old posts and continue to take action on them months after publication. She’s highly credible and well respected in her opinions. She doesn’t “pimp them” choosing only “good fit” products – so she’s got her community’s trust. The mega blogger works with dozens of brands. This was “just another job” and lacked any passion or insight. Her influence appeared and then disappeared literally in a matter of minutes.

So the sponsored post calculator may be telling you to drop prices – but remember, there is SO MUCH MORE to pro-blogging than a few numbers.

OK so I am underselling myself big time!

It’s really hard to have confidence in pricing your blog activity. We used data from 100 working Australian bloggers. We gathered it from media kits, pricing tables and data from campaigns run by three different agencies over the last year. The bloggers surveyed were all working bloggers. There were no beginner bloggers with no brand experience.

The more experience you have with sponsored content, the better you’ll be able to make a campaign work. Without that experience, you may be a fab writer, with a good, engaged audience – but lack the understanding of professional blogging. This tool is only the very tip of the blogger pricing iceberg. Like everything sold, your prices will be subject to market demand. If you start demanding prices without back-up to prove your results, you’ll find yourself struggling to get gigs.

Data sources and analysis

The data and methodologies we used to determine the industry prices will be published as a case study soon. Several surprising results came from the data and we plan to publish an analysis of the state of the industry. This blogger rate calculator is a tool intended to give a broad overview of charging, and of course, does not take into account the important factors like influence, professionalism and results.

We drew data from 100 recent media kits, rate cards and PCRs for bloggers currently working with brands and seeking further relationships ONLY. These scaled from top tier influencers down to influencers with communities under 10,000. We looked at health and beauty, parenting, lifestyle, fashion, food and travel niches. Where there was no clear primary focus of the blog, we categorised the blogger as a “lifestyle” blogger. Note that there are a number of barriers to achieving 100% accurate data in this area (without getting full assistance by all bloggers involved) so data is meant as a guide only.

In addition to blogger media kits and PCRs, we referenced the following to interpret data: